


The Ocean's Gift

by Wildcard



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dark, Gen, Mermaids, fairytale, modern day AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 10:50:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wildcard/pseuds/Wildcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grief destroys you. Your every heartbeat is a hammer thud against your breastbone.</p>
<p>Or: A Modern Day Fairy Tale AU With Mermaids. Written for mericorn, for Giftstuck 2013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ocean's Gift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mericorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mericorn/gifts).



> Happy Holidays! I hope you like this fic. I know it starts off a bit dark but I promise it gets better! I absolutely love Rose and the moment I saw your suggested char relationships and the suggestion of mermaids+fairy tale+modern day AU, this fic popped into my head and then I just ran with it. XD

When Ms. Lalonde bought the big house by the seaside, everyone in the little village waited expectantly for the servants to arrive. It'd be good for business, they murmured to each other, having a rich lady living in their midst. She'd buy fresh fish from the boats every morning, she'd send her servants down to get her fresh milk and cheese and bread. Maybe she'd even hire some of the local lads to keep her garden in shape. 

The servants never came. 

Every week, Ms. Lalonde would stride down to the village in her high heels. She balanced on them as easily as dew on morning grass while the tired fishwives watched her go and wondered if those shoes hurt her feet the way that the cold hurt their hands. She'd buy a loaf of bread, some cheese and butter from the girl with the goat and head back home. Her garden had enough vegetables and she seemed to never eat meat or fish. She'd never get involved in conversation beyond the basic politesse demanded by their interactions and apart from those trips, she stayed in her house.

Gradually, the village grew used to her. There were rumors about her of course (a husband who died on the sea, a daughter who drowned with him, a cellar full of expensive vintage wines to forget them with) but after a year had passed, the villagers had quite accepted her as a mainstay. She wasn't going anywhere and even if her contributions to the village economy were little enough, at least she didn't make trouble either. Like the sand, she was simply there.

Some of the fisher boys said that they saw her on the beach in the mornings. She'd bought part of the beach when she purchased the house (but not the sea, nobody could own the sea) and according to the fishers, she often slept there with a bottle nearby. It was a warm country and there was no risk of her dying of cold, nor of being swept away by the waves as long as she slept high enough on the sand, so though the villagers tsked, they did nothing.

Ms. Lalonde was left to herself and that was just how she liked it.

She'd had enough of city folk and their prying disguised as concern. Whose business was it how many bottles she drank or how often she ate? The only two people who had any reason to care were gone. The sea had taken them from her and given nothing back, not even their bodies. She pictured their bodies rotting at the ocean's bottom and fish nibbling at their flesh. When she saw other people eating fish, she shuddered inwardly with disgust, imagining the scaled bellies stuffed with her little Rose's cheeks. 

Grief was inexorable as the ocean waves. It washed over and pulled her under. Every day, she slept a little closer to the tide line.

Every day, she slept a little closer to the tide line.

Every day, it grew harder to remember what their voices had sounded like until one day, she woke on the shore with a babe in her arms. Her clothes clung to her, damp and stiff from the spray of salt but the baby clung to her even more tightly.

It was as perfect as a seashell, with delicate little fingers and chubby cheeks. Its eyes were closed and the spray of gold eyelashes against its rounded cheeks were as soft as spikes of sunlight through clouds. A little mop of wet golden hair clung to its head in half-tousled waves and its lips were as pink as coral.

It was a girl. A flawless baby girl, no older than a year perhaps. She was naked as the day that she was born and she was holding onto Ms. Lalonde's finger with all the stubbornness of a child that hadn't yet learned to be ashamed of needing.

"Rose," Ms. Lalonde breathed, touching the baby's face with disbelieving wonder. The baby looked so much like the child she'd lost, just like the baby that her Rosie had once been. She kissed the baby's closed eyelids and tasted salt, bitter as her own tears.

Ms. Lalonde wasn't a religious woman. She believed in no god and attended no church. She knew the dead could not return. She knew this could not be her Rose.

And yet, the baby was in her arms. What mother would abandon her child to another's arms unless they wanted the child to be taken care of? Perhaps some poor woman had given her baby up, hoping Ms. Lalonde would take care of her. Surely it would be an act of mercy to accept.

Surely her reasoning wasn't flawed. Surely she wasn't justifying the course of action she wanted to follow.

Without thinking about it, she'd stood up and started to wend her way back to the house. In her head, she was already making a list of things she'd need for the baby - more goat's milk for the baby to drink, soft food for her to chew, rags she could use for diapers, easy books to learn to read with, a pacifier in case she started crying (or was she too old for that?).

Part of her still thought she should look for the baby's mother. If it had been one of the fisherfolk who had given her the baby, they would surely like to know that she had decided to adopt the child (when had she decided that? When she woke? When she felt the baby's soft breaths against her neck?). She could talk tot hem about the risks of simply giving their baby away to a stranger, offer to let them still be part of the child's life--

The baby opened her eyes and they were as purple as the sunset over the ocean; Ms. Lalonde stopped walking and stared at her.

"Rose?" She said again and this time it was a naming sure as a baptism. The sea had taken her husband and her child from her; the sea had returned her daughter alone and Ms. Lalonde felt the empty aching hollow of her heart start to fill once more.

The baby gurgled in response and Ms. Lalonde stroked the baby's damp curls tenderly. Yes. This was Rose. This was her Rose.

(This was madness.)

First, she decided, she would bathe the baby. Rose's skin was crusted with salt and grains of sand stuck in the baby's crevices and the wrinkled corners of her mouth. She needed to be washed in proper clean water with soap. Would the soap she used be too harsh for a baby's skin? She remembered buying Johnson's baby soap the first time around, the bottles of liquid soap as golden as oil. But she had nothing else to use on Rose for now. She'd just have to be careful.

She carried Rose through the house and only now noticed how dark it was,how it reeked of sorrow and loss. Empty bottles lay strewn around the rooms and the curtains were all drawn. She'd staggered through her house in a haze of grief, unseeing of the dirt and debris.

She'd need to clean it up now. She couldn't have Rose running around in such an environment. What if she fell and cut herself?

At least the bathroom was mostly clean. She filled the tub with warm water, cradling the baby against her chest and murmuring soft little compliments to her all the while, then set Rose into the water.

The color bled away from the baby into the water and what was left, what reached for her with fingers that were now dark tentacles, was a grey-skinned corpse with hair and eyes as white as bone. Tentacle spilled from her waist in a tangle of deepest black tinged faintly with purple and though she was still a fat, friendly baby, her gurgles had changed into a chittering speech. 

Later, Ms. Lalonde would be ashamed of herself for screaming but in the moment, all she could think was that the sea had not given her daughter back, her sea had given back her daughter’s corpse and animated it with some strange spirit of its own. She’d been a scientist, she should know better than to fall prey to superstition but how could anyone take the sudden warping of their child in stride? How could anyone look at a monster and see their baby still?

She should take it to Skaianet labs. She was an astronomer, not a biologist, but they’d have scientists there that could make sense of the creature. What if it had eaten her baby? What if--

“Mama,” the baby said clearly, syllables distinct and soft in the midst of its mad muttering and just like that, Mom Lalonde changed her mind again.

How could she give up a child that called her ‘mama’?

~*~

The girl grew. 

By the age of two, she was speaking in full sentences, expressing herself simply but clearly. She called Mom Lalonde ‘Mother’ now and wanted at least two baths a day. Mom Lalonde forced herself to soap even the slippery tentacles that budded from her beloved daughter’s body and gradually grew comfortable enough that she did not flinch back when Rose lovingly stroked her cheek with one of them.

By three, Rose’d learnt not to babble in her strange tongue when Mom Lalonde was around. She practiced her speeches in her head before she spoke, wording herself as best as she could. She was a serious little child, full of questions. Mom Lalonde contrasted it to how she’d been before (because it was before return and after return, never before death) and told herself that the ocean had given back her daughter but it would have been foolish to expect her to be unchanged.

By four, Rose was reading on her own, often while seated on the rocks near the ocean. She was careful to never dip her feet into the water, to let the feet become tentacles, but she enjoyed the spray of salt against her skin and the sussuration of the waves, familiar as her heartbeat. Mom Lalonde would stretch out on the beach and sunbathe, sipping her martinis languidly but always keeping a careful watch on her daughter.

By five, Rose was curious as to why the families in the books she read had fathers but she didn’t. She asked her mother where her father was and why she changed when she touched the water but her mother didn’t. Mom Lalonde told her the truth. Mom Lalonde told her that it must be kept a secret because otherwise, people would take Rose away. That Rose didn’t attend the little village school because Mom Lalonde was too afraid that someone would spill water on Rose and see how different she was.

By six, Rose was begging to go to school and promising to always wear long-sleeved dresses that hit the floor, even in summer, so they’d never see anything was wrong with her. It was the only request that Mom Lalonde ever denied her. Mom Lalonde bought her a computer of her very own instead and had an Internet connection installed just for Rose. It was parent-locked, of course, but with it Mom Lalonde could access school courses and watch Rose chat to people.

By seven, Rose was obsessed with The Little Mermaid. She watched it over and over again, always rewinding the sections with Ursula and asking Mom Lalonde if she thought that Rose was a sea witch too and that was why Rose looked like her when she got wet. Mom Lalonde was careful to reassure her that if she was, she was a good witch. She ordered books with wizards and witches, anything she could find that presented them in a positive light, and filled Rose’s room with them.

By eight, Rose had moved on to being obsessed with wizards and witchcraft. She tried little spells of her own, watched by her indulgent (half-fearful) mother. Mom Lalonde knew there was no such thing as magic,of course, but she also knew that the dead did not rise and that there was no such thing as mermaids. In short, Mom Lalonde knew that she knew nothing at all except that Rose was hers and she would deny Rose nothing. She wasn’t sure if she relieved or disappointed when the spells failed to work.

By nine, Rose was begging Mom Lalonde to be allowed to go into the ocean. She pleaded with her, swearing that they would be safe during the night time, that even the night fishers didn’t come near their section of the beach and nobody would catch them. She just wanted to feel the ocean around her once. Just once! She promised to stop begging if she could just venture into the waters once.

By ten, Rose was swimming in the ocean as a monthly treat. It was only once a month, always at night and never for longer than an hour but when she emerged from the waters, she practically glowed. She looked more alive, more human, after she’d been in the waters as if they possessed some magical healing powers that worked on her alone. 

By eleven, Rose had her own swimming pool. It was in a windowless room but it was filled fresh with salt water from the ocean every morning and Mom Lalonde allowed her to sleep in the pool if she wished. Rose decorated the pool room with shells and sand; if she could have used her computer in the pool room, she would have never left it. 

By twelve, Rose was considering a career as an ichthyologist. She told Mom Lalonde that octopuses and most fish never stopped growing, they only slowed their rate of growth as they got bigger. Mom Lalonde asked if she was angling for a bigger pool and Rose told her no, the pool wasn’t her real aquarium, it was the village. She wanted to visit a city. She wanted to see more people and see them for longer than ten minutes at a time while Mom Lalonde purchased something.

By thirteen, Rose had been to a city and made her first real friends. The second was more exciting than the first for her. The city had been overwhelmingly noisy and crowded but she had seen some fashions she liked at least. Overall, her conversations with Jade and Dave and John were far more exciting. She lived vicariously through them, listening eagerly to their tales of school and their families and their pets. She asked Mom Lalonde for a pet as well and when she got a tiny black kitten, she and Jade tried to introduce their pets over webcam. It didn’t work.

By fourteen, Rose was going down to the village every morning to buy fresh fish for Jaspers. She wore black lipstick, a long skirt and a long-sleeved blouse whenever she left the house. The black lipstick was an affectation she’d picked up in the city; like everything else, Mom Lalonde had gone overboard catering to her and Rose now had fifteen different shades of black lipstick, twice as many shades of black nailpolish and enough black eyeliner pencils that she could have covered her whole body in black. The villagers stared at her but Rose knew that was because of their isolation more than her actual looks.

By fifteen, Rose was starting to feel left out. John and Dave had met first in real life with John spending a month at Dave’s and then Dave spending a month at John’s during the summer. And then during winter, they’d all gone to Jade’s! All of them except her. So she asked Mom Lalonde instead if her friends could come over. It took a month of passive-aggressive warfare but in the end, Mom Lalonde surrendered, fearful as she was that Rose’s secret would be discovered. She was right to be scared; the first night they were there, Jade accidentally knocked over her glass of water and enough of it hit Rose’s hand that the truth came out just as surely as the grey blossomed through Rose’s skin.

By sixteen, Rose was convinced that she had the best friends in the world and the most annoying, passive-aggressive insincere mother in the world. Anything Rose expressed an interest in, her mother was so condescendingly excited about. She fought the urge to snap ‘you’re not my _real_ mom’ at Mom Lalonde, telling herself that it was teenage human hormones and that even if Mom Lalonde did frame her terrible poetry and hang it on the walls, she shouldn’t react with anger. None of the others really understood her situation but she preferred analysing their lives to talking about hers anyway.

By seventeen, Rose wanted out. Her childhood ambitions of college and moving out were gone, long-forgotten. A stronger call sounded in her ears, day and night. It was the waves of her heartbeat, it was the wash of the ocean. The pool wasn’t enough and the cities were too far from the sea. Even the ones by the ocean, the ones with docks running to them, were wrong. Their waters were polluted and shallow. She needed to go somewhere cleaner, somewhere deeper. 

She needed to go home.

By eighteen, Rose was ready to leave. All the arrangements had been made. Mom Lalonde had taken sailing lessons and had purchased a state-of-the-art yacht. Dave, John and Jade had all taken scuba-diving lessons and applied for a gap year from college. The house had been rented out, all of Rose’s possessions transferred to the yacht and Mom Lalonde had drawn out a whole itinerary for them to follow. Everything was as exquisitely arranged as a campaign of war.

Mom Lalonde had lost her daughter once to the ocean. She wouldn’t let it happen again. Where Rose went, she went too, even if she had to stay topside and watch the children dive after Rose, following her until the water pressure grew too intense and they had to surface again. Mom Lalonde dangled a waterproof purple lantern near the yacht, signalling them where to surface safely, and kept warm, dry towels on the deck for them.

She wasn't worried about letting Rose dive alone. Not anymore. The ocean might take Rose from her but Rose would always find her way back.


End file.
